


Stone One

by Cuda (Scylla)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Making Out, Sastiel - Freeform, Sastiel Love Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12754962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scylla/pseuds/Cuda
Summary: Written for Sastiel Love Week 2017. The bonfire's burned low, leaving Sam and Castiel with a deep chasm to cross, and the lingering bitterness of smoke.





	Stone One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyShadowphyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/gifts).



Sam watched Castiel read from across the library, and felt his stomach turn over. He wasn’t sure either of them was ready, no matter how much he ached. Maybe they never would be. It had to start somewhere, though. Things couldn’t get worse than they were right now, but they could get better. Right? Sam had enough hope for the both of them.

He - well - he hoped, anyway.

Sam’s hands curled into fists on either side of his laptop. He forced them open again, smoothing the table’s scarred finish as if it were Castiel’s throat. Slow press of the thumbpad, gentle, along the thick tendon and down to the hollow.

Don’t think about it.

Sam flexed both hands and pushed away from the table. “Cas, you need a refill?”

Castiel’s eyes came up, dragging over his untouched - and probably cold - mug of coffee on the way. Of course he didn’t need a refill; he drank coffee for the same reasons other people went birdwatching or played with magnetic kissing dogs. He looked sorry about it.

“No worries,” Sam said with a watered-down smile, “I’ll be right back.”

This time, preoccupied as he was with Castiel, Sam made it all the way to the coffee machine before his legs and back locked up. The past few days, as soon as the darkened kitchen door came into view, Sam swore the concrete floor turned to sludge. The air turned stale as an old tomb, and every step was a battle. He caught the smell of smoke from somewhere as he filled up his thermos, and sidestepped to the sink for a palmful of dish soap. He held it up to his nose in both hands, breathing deep.

The chem-lab-lemon smell of Joy filled the kitchen as he washed his hands, restoring at least a little of the oxygen to the airless room in the process. Under any other circumstances, Sam would have laughed at his own thoughts. Now, he picked up his mug and hurried out of the kitchen - and this time left the light on.

It wasn’t as if they paid a power bill.

When Sam returned to the library, Castiel’s eyes followed him. The worry in them pushed him out of balance, until he didn’t trust himself to take another step. He closed his eyes, raised his mug to his lips, and breathed the steam. Maybe in a minute he could sit down again. Just another minute.

Castiel pushed his chair back. Sam felt the scrape through the soles of his boots. Fuck, here it came. He should make a quick escape, before something happened that he couldn’t take back. But the earth was threatening to tip him over, so he locked his knees and focused on the scent of his coffee.

Castiel’s hands covered Sam’s, slow as an eclipse. He had such artistic hands, Sam thought, with long fingers and perfect tendons, like a Renaissance oil painting. His eyes opened, finally, as the warmth of them soaked through his skin. They were powerful enough to fight; to kill even, but oh, so careful on his skin.

They hadn’t been on his skin - not in any meaningful way - in days.

Sam let out a gusty exhale, and lowered his hands from his face, still sandwiched between Castiel’s. The burning smell returned, and Sam wondered if he’d ever get it out of his head.

Castiel didn’t ask how things were. He didn’t ask at all; he knew better, and one terrible shared look a day was enough to say all that was needed. They stood like that, touching around the heat of a coffee mug. Sam forgot what they’d been doing before he made the pilgrimage to the kitchen.

Castiel gave him a questioning look, then gently pried the mug from Sam’s hands. He set it on the table edge, and put himself in its place between Sam’s hands. He’d rebuffed all of Sam’s touches, ever since the smoke invaded the Bunker like a weed, and in the warm press of his body now Sam felt the chasm yawn open in himself. The world did the tilt-shift it had been threatening, and Sam was falling. Falling into a cold, endless future. Words crammed in his throat and halted there, too many to get out. His fists bunched up Castiel’s sleeves.

Maybe the angel heard him. After all, somewhere in the beginning of Sam’s tangled thoughts was Castiel’s name. Once, a long time ago, Castiel explained that he could hear Sam when he needed him. Sam needed him now more than ever; knew it and hated it at the same time. Castiel put his hands under Sam’s jaw and held his head like a dog’s; let Sam look at him, however he liked and for as long as he could.

Between them, the smell of smoke curled up again. But that couldn’t be real. Castiel had been wearing another shirt then. A shirt Sam washed, along with every scrap of his own clothing, when the smell choked the Bunker and Sam couldn’t get three steps without feeling like his guts were being pulled out, hand over hand.

He thought about looking away. About breaking away. But Castiel’s sad eyes were a lifeline. Sam surged forward instead, like a man pursued, and Castiel caught him.

Their mouths met hard and furious, hands searching one another’s skin. Sam gathered up Castiel in his arms; hauled him up and onto the Library table by the hips. Castiel had Sam’s buttons undone with a speed that seemed two-thirds magic, and when his hands hit Sam’s chest there was nothing to catch him but this. But Castiel.

Broad, soft wings snapped open in Sam’s mind. He spread his fingers on Castiel’s bare back, mimicking the pinions in his imagination. He heard a dry sob, and didn’t know its owner.

Castiel’s touch left burning trails behind. He held Sam a little too hard; clutched him a little too tight. His fingers caught in the snarls of Sam’s hair; teeth nipped at Sam’s throat and shoulder. The pain was all right. The pain was an anchor. Grief books talked a lot about anchoring in reality. For a lot of people, that was telling the story over and over, until it became real. For Sam, it had - for a long time, anyway - been pain.

Stone one, Sam thought, and the air squeezed out of his chest. Stone one, and build on it. He heard Dean’s voice in his memory. The instructions lived on, working now when reality didn’t want to stick and Sam preferred it stay gooey. He knew the place his mind wanted to go. It was cold and dark, he reminded himself, and if he went, Castiel couldn’t follow.

Instead, he charged into the heat of now; sank into Castiel’s suddenly hard hands. He covered the angel, pressing him back onto the table and the shuffling papers in a too-little-too-late frenzy. Nothing to protect here, nothing left to save. Home was gone; burned to the ground in clouds of heavy smoke.

Castiel would never be home. But he was home-adjacent; he and Jody, Alex and Claire. Castiel’s great angel’s heart might be mostly invulnerable, but he still needed Sam. They were, for the most part, all they had. So Sam covered him, clung to him, and felt the embers of their little banked fire stir to life. It would grow again, Sam thought, if only because they’d feed it with the stubbornness that Dean had loved - and hated - in them both.

It would take time. Just time. And what was there do to now, but wait.

**Author's Note:**

> I challenged myself with this one - didn't allow myself to use 'feeling' words, unless absolutely unavoidable.


End file.
